Sadly I can’t credit this
Father Mapple at the Pulpit, from Rockwell Kent’s Illustrated Moby Dick, or The Whale. 1930.
“I come from a distant land
with a foreign knapsack on my back
with a silenced song on my lips
As I travelled down the river of my life
I saw my voice
(like Jonah)
swallowed by a whale
And my very life lived in my voice”
- (Kabul, December 1989) (via indigenousdialogues and Poetry Translation Centre)
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
—from Extravagaria (translated by Alastair Reid, pp. 27-29, 1974)
(Source: being.publicradio.org)
Arabic calligraphy for a tattoo in my Inbox. Drinking gin with lemonade and watermelon. Falling asleep to rain, waking up to rain. Dream that I am at the bottom of the ocean, then flung violently by a wave into the sky. After the wave another wave, of broken glass and ring pulls and plastic fragments, shells. Dredged up debris arching out of the ocean like a polluted rainbow to find my naked skin. Debris sticks to my body like magnets, until I am concreted into a mask. A body that stiffens and sinks. Whales always rescue me in my dreams. Sometimes I am on a boat and the ocean is a storm or a tsunami and whales swim up underneath the boat until the boat breaks up. Then I am in the water, swimming with them. In other dreams I hear a song I can’t translate and an old woman is tattooing my chin and lips black with a bone chisel. When I wake up I think if I live to be her age, I will get this tattoo. I am always armoured with lipstick. Nude lips don’t know how to lie. I lie with silence. The second dream I had last night was about rape, and the dream after that, and the dream after that. I seek out the thumb of a new master. I am prepared to beg: make my body forget, how does a body ever forget. His opposite is a good man I’m afraid to touch. The ruin I’ll bring him in my fingertips and mouth that itches like a vein remembering heroin. Drowning because it’s the only time I feel like I’m not drowning. Drowning open mouthed, my body rained in. I haven’t forgotten how to swim, I just want to stop.
In that country there is a train
that stops when it gets tired It doesn’t bother
to read the signs There is a man in my car
who claims to be French
but does not understand me
when I ask quelle heure
est-il He shows me a picture of a man
and points to himself And the man
in the picture has a different
face For weeks I have been woken up
by dreams in which I open my mouth
to speak and only then discover
I am underwater In the backseat of
a cab I go through all the Arabic phrases
I know in my head how much
is the bread and the son
is in the garden with the cow and I love,
I am a woman In the front seat
it sounds like the cab driver is yelling
at the man next to him I think
they are discussing the best streets
to take Meanwhile under another country’s
ocean certain navy officers produce
horrible noises to scare away
the whales The navy needs this portion
of the ocean to be devoid of whales
so they can perform
exercises No one in the navy
bothers to learn the language
of the whales They think that if their noises
are loud enough
the whales will get the gist In the city
I meet another American woman She says
she is having a party in her apartment
When I get there everyone is speaking
English We sit on a rug in the middle
of the floor and she serves us
Hamburger Helper Everyone is talking
very loudly and I do not have anything to say
to any of them In the middle of a bite
of artificially colored pasta
I look up and see you looking
at me You glance at your plate
and then back up at me and
you roll your eyes We do not speak
a word out loud I swim up through
the surface of the water
and take a deep breath I hope the whales
are still living in that ocean saying
to each other what was all
that noise about
(by ecantwell, thank you beenthinking)
(Source: splashofred.squarespace.com)
(Source: fauren)
